9 player SNG

Well, John here is another one for you. I am not sure if this one is a cooler or if I over played the hand. I played tight for the first 3 levels and then started to play more aggressive after we hit 50/100 on lvl 4. I had won a nice pot with a A high straight to get to 2770 chips.

The seat before me had won 4 hands prior to our playing this hand and he had been tight so I knew he had something big but I had him on AA or AK. I was a bit worried about QQ or JJ but thought he might fold them on my PF re-raise if he had them. I was following the STT Strategy from the courses for middle stages.

With a raise to 300 in front of me, if I do raise, a standard raise is to 3x this bet (900). However, this bet will be basically 1/3 of my stack, which means that I'll be pot-committed and cannot fold. This means that if I want to raise, I will need to shove. To find out the range that I can shove here, I now need to go to an ICM calculator. When I put this scenario into it, I get a shove range of QQ+. Therefore, I cannot raise.

My options are now, to call or fold and now is where I need a read on the opp. If the opp is tight, then their range will include all the card combinations that are ahead of me and very few that I'm ahead of. if the opp is loose, then there will be many more combinations that I'm ahead of (lower broadways and connectors).

Due to the opp being tight, I'm going to preserve my chip situation and muck preflop. I have a top 3 chip stack, so I want to be playing against the shorter stacks, instead of against a stack that can take me out.

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As played, I'm getting it in on the flop here with two pair every single time. This is the problem with playing KJ against a tight player when I'll basically be all-in.. the combinations of hands that dominate me are all within their range.

I think with stack sizes as they are, you could consider 3Betting to something like 700 as this would probably leverage a similar fold equity as a raise to 900 due to the low SPR and the pressure you're putting on villain's tournament life.

However your hand is a pretty bad one to be doing this with because it's so easily dominated and flops that KJ wants to see are often the same flops that villain (who has a stronger range) also wants to see, and you just end up getting it in way behind, like here.

Also you've still got two players to act who could 4Bet and you'd probably have to fold despite the pot odds you'd be getting because of ICM considerations.

I'd just fold preflop and preserve my stack to apply pressure later on in a better spot.

Thanks for the input gents. Ironic I can stay so patient for a while and then overplay this hand. I had folded A10 twice in the first 3 levels patting my self on the back for being patient as they were not the right spots to play it.

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